I don’t like paying full price for my tools, so where possible I take advantage of good 2nd hand buys. My sliding compound mitre saw was a prime example. I wanted to replace my passable Ryobi saw with something better & found a Hitachi C12LSH saw on Facebook Marketplace and the seller was only 2km from home. The price was great, so I snapped it up.
This is a beast of a saw that has several unique features.
- It has a digital display for mitre & bevel angles.
- It has a dual-rail assembly offers a compact footprint without protruding rails. What this means is that the rail can be fixed with the saw sliding forward & back on the rail and not having a need for space behind the saw. Or the the saw can be fixed to the rail and saw & rail slide with space needed behind the saw.
- As well as the coarse mitre adjustment, there is a thumbwheel to do fine adjustment.
The saw is large (as befits a 12 inch bladed saw) and heavy at 31kg – so I needed to set it up in a permanent way, yet still be able to move it around my workshop.
My solution was a purpose built mobile trolley.
I used 18mm Formply and set the saw down in the trolley so that the table on the saw aligned with the top of the trolley.
I added foldable wings level with the table so I could support longer workpieces.
There is a full width drawer at the base of the trolley and I’m considering 1/2 width drawers down one side.
Inside the trolley I also have a rolling box for my offcuts. This makes it quick and easy to manage these when I’m doing repetitive jobs on the saw.
The trolley is on lockable casters so I can move it around the workshop. Most of the time I leave it in one position that gives me ample room either side of it.
